"UEFA Europa Cup" redirects here. For the men's competition, see UEFA Europa League. Football tournament
| Organising body | UEFA |
|---|---|
| Founded | 4 December 2023; 12 months ago (2023-12-04) |
| Region | Europe |
| Number of teams | 44 |
| Related competitions | UEFA Women's Champions League (1st tier) |
 2025–26 UEFA Women's Europa Cup | |
The UEFA Women's Europa Cup is a planned annual international women's football competition organised by UEFA, the governing body of the sport for Europe. It will serve as a secondary club competition below the UEFA Women's Champions League and will run concurrently to it. The first edition is scheduled to take place in the 2025–26 season.
Background
After several decades successfully running knock-out competitions for men's football clubs, the UEFA Women's Cup was created in 2001 to offer similar opportunities for women's clubs. The Women's Cup was renamed to the UEFA Women's Champions League in 2009 to match the styling of the men's tournament, and the tournament was expanded to include more clubs and more countries.
Following UEFA's expansion of men's competitions with the third-tier Europa Conference League playing its first season in 2021, proposals for a second-tier women's competition were submitted to offer a similar increase in scale to the women's game. On 4 December 2023 UEFA announced that it would act on these proposals with the creation of a new second-tier tournament which would commence from the 2025–26 season. The name of the competition was confirmed as the "UEFA Women's Europa Cup" on 16 December 2024.
Format
Similarly to the UEFA Europa League in men's football, clubs can enter the tournament both by virtue of their league position in the previous season or by elimination from early stages of the same season's Champions League. Unlike both the men's Europa League and the Champions League for both genders, the new tournament will be a pure knock-out tournament with no group stage. Every round, up to and including the final, will be played as a two-legged home-and-away tie.
The tournament will be contested by 44 clubs in total – thirteen direct qualifiers from associations ranked 8–13 and 18–24 based on domestic league placement in the previous season plus thirty-one teams eliminated in the first and second qualifying rounds of the same season's Women's Champions League.
| Teams entering in this round | Teams advancing from the previous round | Teams entering from the Champions League | |
|---|---|---|---|
| First round (24 teams) |
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| Second round (32 teams) |
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| Round of 16 (16 teams) |
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References
- ^ "New UEFA Women's club football system explained". UEFA. 4 December 2023. Archived from the original on 4 December 2023. Retrieved 5 December 2023.
- "Women's Champions League details confirmed" (PDF). UEFA.com. Union of European Football Associations. Archived (PDF) from the original on 20 October 2012. Retrieved 8 May 2009.
- "Record Women's EURO 2025 prize money approved". UEFA. 16 December 2024. Retrieved 16 December 2024.
- "Women's football to enter new era with UEFA Women's Europa Cup". UEFA. 16 December 2024. Retrieved 16 December 2024.
- "Provisional access list for the UEFA Women's Champions League and 2nd competition 2025/26" (PDF). uefa.com. UEFA. Archived (PDF) from the original on 7 December 2023. Retrieved 6 December 2023.
| UEFA Women's Europa Cup | |||||||
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| International women's club football | ||
|---|---|---|
| Global | FIFA – Club World Cup |  |
| Africa | CAF – Champions League | |
| Asia | AFC – Champions League; WAFF Women's Clubs Championship | |
| Europe | UEFA – Champions League – Europa Cup | |
| North, Central America and the Caribbean | CONCACAF – Champions Cup; UNCAF Women's Interclub Championship; Summer Cup | |
| Oceania | OFC – Champions League | |
| South America | CONMEBOL – Copa Libertadores | |
| See also: International men's club football | ||
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